Once again, the University of Windsor Lancers has gone to an Ontario University Athletics rival to fill its men’s head basketball coaching post.

On Tuesday, the Lancers named Chris Cheng, who spent the past five seasons with the Nipissing University Lakers, head coach. He replaces Chris Oliver, who stepped down in March after 14 seasons. Windsor hired Oliver in 2005 from Queen’s University, where he had spent three seasons as head coach.

“His experience was important, but I think he presented a vision of wanting to create a high-performance culture built around core values that resonated with me and every member of the (six member selection) committee,” Lancers athletic director Mike Havey said. “I think he’s going to make an impact.” Unlike Oliver, who was coaching an established program at Queen’s, it has been a building process for Cheng, who was named the first-ever men’s head basketball coach at Nipissing University in North Bay in 2014.

“I put my heart and soul into everything I do,” the 34-year-old Cheng said. “I have a lot of great supporters that have helped me and my family. These people invested in me, and my program, when there was nothing to believe.”

Playing in a tough Eastern Conference in the OUA against the likes of national powers like Carleton, Ottawa and Ryerson, Cheng’s Nipissing squad compiled a 24-79 record over five seasons, but he did manage to get the team to the playoffs by its third year in the league.

“He built a program at Nipissing from scratch,” Havey said. “Record aside, they were in the playoffs his third year and Nipissing’s a smaller institution and there’s a challenge at being at a smaller institution.”

Aside from his OUA coaching at Nipissing, Cheng has worked with Canadian national programand Ontario provincial program and guided the province to back-to-back national titles in 2011 and 2012.

Currently, he is also an assistant coach for Team Canada and will leave in June to prepare for the U19 FIBA World Cup in Greece. That team could feature Windsor’s Thomas Kennedy, who was an OUA all-rookie selection last year for the Lancers.

“We have national camp in June,” Kennedy said. “Hopefully, I end up coached by him sooner than September, which would be awesome.

“I’m extremely excited to have him as the new head coach. I feel like he has the same competitive energy as any of the players and I like how he shows it with his emotion.”

Before taking over at Nipissing, Cheng was an assistant coach at York where the team made the playoffs all five seasons. He also won back-to-back provincial titles as an assistant coach at Humber College.

Cheng is also a big supporter of Oliver, who he said has been a contact to him since his days at Humber and never afraid to share his knowledge.

“He always kept in touch with me and provided guidance,” Cheng said. “He’s all about sharing the game and he’s not afraid to do it.”

Cheng is also aware of the standard set by Oliver in Windsor. In 14 seasons, Oliver was a three-time OUA coach of the year, compiled a 186-100 record, won six West Division regular-season titles, two West Division playoff titles, an OUA Wilson Cup conference championship and he led the team to three appearances at the U Sports national championship.

“Let’s not overlook what Chris Oliver and the other coaches have done last 14 years,” Cheng said. “They’re done an unbelievable job and he helped me get started when I was young.

“We want to be in contention for regional and national championships and be on top of our OUA conference. We want to be up there and we want to see student-athletes succeed.”

And, along with Kennedy, he likes the roster base that Oliver has left behind.

“I know about eight of them personally,” Cheng said of his roster. “I think it’s a really good group I’m inheriting and it’ll be a good transition. I think it’s a really good group. Chris has some of the top high school products over the last two years.

“I want my team to play with pace and share the ball and defensively be chaotic with pressure and smart with a plan how we attack and defend.”

Cheng and his wife, Siobhan, have a son Tyus and a daughter Taia. The family hopes to be in Windsor by the end of the next week when he’ll get to work recruiting.

“We want to try to win the spring and summer recruiting,” Cheng said. “I’ll be attacking the phone, but also want to make sure they’re the right character.”